It just means you haven’t taken care of your credit – probably for years.

Maybe you don’t understand how the game works. Because it is a game, and you’d better learn the rules.

Maybe you do know how to manage your credit, but you fell on hard times – job loss, unexpected expenses, medical costs.

No matter how bad, subpar, subprime or ugly your credit is right now, it can only get better.

Well, it could get worse but you’d have to keep doing the same wrong stuff. Sort of like that definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

There’s no quick fix.

I didn’t get a FICO score of more than 800 overnight.

I spent years making all the right moves, never missing a payment, keeping my account balances well below the credit limits, not going credit-crazy and applying for too many new cards, paying my bills on time, paying my bills on time, paying my bills on time. See a pattern here?

During a hiatus from my career as a corporate attorney, I served as the financial literacy counselor for the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County, Md. I created and directed its pilot personal finance program for low-income individuals. Under a pseudonym, I was a volunteer moderator for the popular myFICO community forum on consumer credit. My resume is a checkerboard with stints such as sailing on Caribbean yachts, running the office of a TV and film casting company and negotiating multi-million dollar contracts for a Fortune 200 technology company.

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